Interaction effects of organic load and cycle time in an AsBr applied to a personal care industry wastewater treatment

A mechanically stirred anaerobic sequencing batch reactor (ASBR) containing granular biomass was applied to the treatment of a wastewater simulating the effluent from a personal care industry. The ASBR was operated with cycle lengths (tC) of 8, 12 and 24 h and applied volumetric organic loads (AVOL) of 0.75, 0.50 and 0.25 gCOD/L.d, treating 2.0 L liquid medium per cycle. Stirring frequency was 150 rpm and the reactor was kept in an isothermal chamber at 30 °C. Increase in tC resulted in efficiency increase at constant AVOL, reaching 77% at tC of 24 h versus 69% at tC of 8 h. However, efficiency decreased when AVOL decreased as a function of increasing tC, due to the lack of substrate in the reaction medium. Moreover, replacing part of the wastewater by a chemically balanced synthetic one did not yield the expected effect and system efficiency dropped.